


if i make it through tonight (everybody's gonna hear me out)

by yo_let_me_get_a_milkyway



Category: Bull (TV 2016)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Autopsies, Blood and Injury, Bull S1E09 Light My Fire, Crime Scenes, Detective Benny Colón, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Graphic Description, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Investigator Chunk Palmer, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Murder Mystery, Mutual Pining, Partners to Lovers, Plot Twists, Serial Killers, Slow Burn, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:54:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28979946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yo_let_me_get_a_milkyway/pseuds/yo_let_me_get_a_milkyway
Summary: When Chunk Palmer is summoned to help crack the case of a brutal murder, he fears he may be getting himself into something deeper.Or, a small closely woven town in the middle of New Hampshire has a large conspiracy on its hands, and it very much involves the tense Detective Colón with the relentless will to catch the killer.
Relationships: Benny Colón/Chunk Palmer
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	if i make it through tonight (everybody's gonna hear me out)

**Author's Note:**

> ive always wanted to write a murder mystery... haha. it's so fun to watch people tag along as they read and comment every chapter what they think may happen. hopefully we get to play that game!
> 
> anyways, heed the tags. there is a healthy amount of graphic description of a crime scene/murder. title from touch tone telephone by lemon demon, which i always listened to in a bull cbs context.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a crime scene, an all too affable sheriff, an autopsy report, and a detective chunk palmer can't seem to read.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning - this chapter includes very graphic description of stab/knife wounds, bruising, murder, and crime scene description. heed the tags - this is not for the uneasy of people.

The scene is heartless, dry, and chilly. 

Blood trails down from the victim's side, already dried up on the asphalt of the road. Her expression looks serene and at calm, almost as if she's asleep atop a cloud, lips gently parted and eyelashes shut against her cheeks. Almost as if there was no struggle at all. Palmer knows that's never the case with these kinds of homicides.

Further down, he notices that her body is painted with bruises, a little more reminiscent of the struggle than the upper half of her body. Slashes, cuts even, painting a picture of purples and reds until they reach the main focus of the image - the stab wound to her abdominal area. Wincing, Chunk clutched his hands closer together and prayed that he'd be able to get through this.

Despite working these kinds of things for the last 20 years of his life, he'll still never know how to fathom the loss of the humanity. 

Around him blares the noise of police sirens, yellow tape with black text on it surrounding the entrances of the small forest roadway and going so far as to cage off the crime scene from the public eye. Forensics experts are already examining the car left next to the bridge, as well as the several bags of groceries kept in the trunk that seemed to be untouched. 25 year old Kara Roberts seemed to be a busy woman, what from the looks of the car and the groceries. She was most likely heading home for dinner with her family. 

Met with the victim of death long enough, Chunk turned his face and ducked underneath the yellow tape, ready to report for duty. As much as the scene appalled him, he had a job to do - and it'd ultimately do the churning in his stomach better if he started as soon as possible.

He spots the man of the hour, donned with the shiny sheriff badge on his vest and a gaze he couldn't quite read. "Excuse me sir," Chunk began, drowning in dread as he approached the man in question. "You wouldn't happen to be the sheriff, would you?"

The man clicks his tongue, seeming awfully dapper for the situation at hand. "That'd be me," he greets. "Sheriff Jason Bull, but you may call me Bull in short. I presume that your department sent you down here all the way from New York City?"

"...Yes," Chunk nods, feeling like this man is reading him way too much for first impressions. "Private Investigator Chunk Palmer at your service."

Politely reaching his hand out, Chunk feels Bull take his hand and give it a firm shake - he's familiar with this kind of thing. It's not something to get used to, having to be thrown head first into an investigation with new faces and more people he'll have to get to know without any warning. There's a gruesome thought scalding his brain that reminds him that both of them have the most important jobs. 

"I actually got some reading done on the way here," Chunk informs him, before he reaches into his satchel and waves a manila folder full of crime scene description and victim history. "I'd like to hear this from a man who knows the area well."

Bull instantly sighs, closing his eyes and appearing to recall the woman's presence in town. "Kara Roberts, 25 and a young mother if you asked me," he begins, and Chunk nods in affirmation of having read this info during the four hour drive it took to get here. "Her husband owns the local bar, and she has two twins that are a fair two years young. She was reported missing by her husband when she didn't show up to dinner four nights ago. Both of them are extremely close."

"There didn't happen to be any altercations between the husband and wife, were there?"

A shake of the sheriff's head. "Not that I can name."

Chunk sighed, placing his hands in the pockets of his coat as the breeze passed by them and picked up the leaves. "Three days until her body was found... I don't suppose many people come around this part of town?"

Bull shrugged. "It's more of a shortcut, but only the people who really know the place take this road. Down the road is a fishing spot this place is known for, but we don't really like to fish when it's cold."

Nodding, he took in this new information, applying it to the methodical theories his brain began to conjure up. Unfortunately, Chunk couldn't manage to come up with anything else.

"If it helps, you came as early as we found out," Bull laments. "Tell you what... I'll get you and take you to the sheriff's station as soon as our forensics team finishes evaluating the body, hmm?"

"That'd be perfect," Chunk agrees. "Thank you for your cooperation."

Leaving with so much as a nod to Bull, Chunk headed for his car - parked alongside the side of the road. Taking his seat in the driver's side, he took in the entirety of the scene itself - frantic but not quick, as the sheriff watched them closely and crushed the leaves beneath his feet. It would've been poetic, dark red caking the pavement next to oranges and yellows, body untouched from the neck up as if the struggle was more of a release.

He shook his head. It couldn't have been - the knife wound in her abdomen and the lack of the knife in question said otherwise.

Taking one last look, he spotted the items of her car, where she appeared to be dragged out of. A coat on the passenger seat - she was riding alone, had a vacant area to place it - a water bottle and her keys in the cupholder part next to the gear shift - a picture of her young family dangling from the car mirror in the center. It always pained him, knowing that these people were humans just as much as he was, knowing that some investigators were able to do this heartlessly and that some offices just dropped these kinds of cases. 

Twisting the key into its hole, he tore his eyes from the scene, swallowed down the churning bitterness of mystery in his throat, and drove to the hotel he would be staying at, mind busy. There were a long few days ahead of him.

* * *

The majority of the day was spent checking the town out and getting himself settled into the hotel he was meant to stay at. Trying to stomach down a sandwich on the way to the sheriff's office, he buried the foreboding feeling in the pit of his stomach and trudged on. 

Driving through the area late at night, it looked too homey to be the place of a murder mystery. A place where everyone knew each other - cozy, domestic, nice - it wasn't the first place you'd expect to have a murder take place. Had there been a streak of mist glazing the air or a chillier wind, it'd make a great setting for a ghost town of sorts.

Arriving at the station, he wasted no time coming up to the receptionist's desk and awaiting the presence of the empty chair to be filled in again. The local police gave him odd looks as he towered over them, lack of familiarity beginning to settle in as more and more people appeared to be coming in and out of rooms. It may have been the case that was driving them all closer to insanity, the officers not having signed up for such a thing like this to occur. He pitied their tired eyes, pacing up and down the office.

Fortunately, he didn't have to end up waiting too long. He heard his name called from one of the hallways left of the receptionist desk, so he left the busy area and made his way back there. Towards the end of the hallway was an office sporting a golden name plate on the top of the doorframe, clad with the engraved name of the sheriff he had spoken to earlier.

Bull seemed to notice him before he came in. "You're early," he commented. "I like that about you, Mr. Palmer. On the dot, unlike my past acquaintances."

"I try my best to get the job done," Chunk responded, stepping into his office and shutting the door behind him. Awkwardly finding himself intimidated by Bull's 2 inch taller demeanor, he awaited the man's directions.

Bull took a seat at what seems to be a very orderly desk, eyelids drooping with the day's occupations and whatnot despite still holding that steady figure of his. Understanding his cue, Chunk took a seat in front of the desk, taking one of the whiskey glasses offered by the man and downing it gently so as not to burn his throat. Amused, Bull poured him another glass and gestured towards the significant amount of case files, crime scene photos, forensics, and notes of interest related to the crime scene. With gentle hands, Chunk took each piece of evidence with gentle hands, regarding every detail with careful precision before putting some of it down for further analysis later. 

"It's everything the forensics team has gotten done so far, Mr. Palmer," Bull lamented, eyes shut and fingers pressing between the bridge of his eyebrow. "The autopsy report will be coming tomorrow, but until then we have this to provide."

"Thank you, Bull," Chunk sincerely responded, before looking back down at the pictures of Kara's body. Part of him wondered what the team might've found in the autopsy report, if the assailant ended up doing anything impractical. "No chance I can accompany this autopsy report?"

He huffed. "I'm afraid that isn't possible - they tend to do this kind of thing overnight," Bull said, leaning back against his sturdy swivel chair. "We can have you check it out at the morgue, early in the morning?"

"Yeah," Chunk nodded. "Course, yeah. I'll be there first thing in the morning."

"Great," Bull ended up nodding, and he reached for his keys in his pocket. "I'm afraid we've gotta close up now, if you don't mind leaving?"

"Of course, of course," Chunk nodded, letting Bull usher him out the door in a bit of a hurry. "I'll be here at 9 in the morning."

He guesses that they've ended the conversation now, because Bull thanks him for his help and escorts him from the exit of the building to his car. "We have copies of the photos and everything," the man reassures him, resting his arm on the hood of Chunk's car as he begins to start it up. "So don't feel uncomfortable working as you please with the files."

"I'll do my best to find what I can," Chunk promises him. "I may do some questioning of the family tomorrow as well - do you happen to know if they're available?"

Bull nods. "I'll do a rain check for you. See you tomorrow, Mr. Palmer."

Nodding, he reversed his car out of the parking space, Bull watching him like a hawk on a wire as he drove off into the night. It was almost as if the man was trying to befriend him, despite the fact that they wouldn't be working together for long. He sped up in an attempt to get back to the hotel at 10 sharp. Judging from the recent happenings, it wasn't safe to lurk around in the dark. 

In the car, he read over the reports at the red lights, looking over the interview scripts from the residents of the area near the crime scene. Unfortunately, none of them had anything of significance - the night seemed to have been dead as a mouse, quiet save for the owls inhabiting the area and the cicadas making their chatter. Not even a suspicious vehicle or any noise from the crime scene: the attacker must've known how all of this worked. Chunk winced at the idea - Kara screaming for help, only for her cries to go unnoticed by the world, picked up by the wind but blown in a different direction than intended. 

He was bothered with his thoughts until his phone's GPS system chimed in a major tune. Finally arriving at his hotel, Chunk took one of the special parking spaces he reserved and quickly made his way into the lobby and up the elevator to his floor. Conveniently, one of the receptionists noticed his hectic state and offered him a cup of coffee to assist him working late into the hours of the night, and so he thanked her and proceeded to get to work. 

Staring at the pictures of the crime scene only woke him up even more. What he managed to already engrave in his mind was solidified a lot less bluntly, from the cuts to the bruises of struggle. Every pixel of every photograph helps, from the shape of the cut wounds to the angle it may have been pierced in. Judging from the direction of the wound's depth, the killer may have stricken her from behind. Thankfully, the lower part of her body was clothed, but Chunk still grimaced at the suggestion of sexual assault occurring. The worst part of it all were the pictures of her face. Untouched, looking too blissful to have ever been murdered. 

Moving on from the body's pictures, Chunk proceeded to evaluate the car. Several dents were on the car door's interior item holders - most likely from a series of kicks, possibly an attempt to get away from the killer - and the other doors appeared to be untouched. Chunk began to wonder how she had stopped in the middle of the road, until he realized that one of the tires appeared to be popped. 

_ A popped tire. He didn't see that before. _

Chunk's eye glazed over the picture again, feeling like he had begun to come onto his first big break. The forensics experts never managed to catch any fingerprints on the car's surface, nor a single strand of body hair in the driver's seat or the area around him. It began to come to him that perhaps Kara wasn't dragged out fighting - she was forced to come out of her car, or she wouldn't have been able to come home. He would have to review the car's tires and the puncture the next day.

Chunk could see every detail come into play now, and he let the picture play out in his head. _25 year old Kara Roberts was assaulted in an uncommon shortcut side road after being forced to come out of her car and check her tire, dragged out of her car with struggle, and stabbed in the side and left to bleed out on the side of the road for an amount of three days._

With the image stuck in his head, he puts himself in Kara's shoes and thinks about her last moments. A sudden unexpected brush with death turned murder, a rise in adrenaline, and a fight well fought before she decided she was subject to this crime. Chunk's leg bounced in stress as he darted his eyes across his messy desk, covered in pages and pages of notes and pictures. 

The answer wouldn't come to him at 3 in the morning, he decided eventually. The ideas flooding his head created more doubts than reassurances, everything beginning to create a buzz in his head as he worked. With his brain begging him to look further, he closed his eyes and dreamt of the crime scene. Painted in fall colors, red and purple prominent in the chill of the weather, dotting the smell of the air coppery and bitter. 

And he finally passed out. 

* * *

  
  


Thankful that his body had the amazing ability of waking him up when he needed to be awake, Chunk trudged to his car before the sun arose in the sky and drove to the station as the town awoke. 

It looked better now, than the cooler tones of the night cascading over the stucco and the bricks of the area. Mothers and fathers began to make their way out of their houses with their children at their sides and it only became even more prominent to him that he had a job to do. A job to protect them all. 

He's been a great detective, sure. The people he's worked with loved him, said he had a very humble air to him that contrasted with your usual cocky charm.

At the moment, he just wanted to put the killer behind bars and go back home. 

Finally arriving at the station, he noted the apparent lack of cars in the lot, taking a spot closer to the entrance of the area to save him the trouble of having to walk too far. He wasn't going to be long anyways - just a quick stop by the morgue to check out Kara's body and get a better look-see for himself, a question about the tires and if the forensics team found a cause for the puncture, and a list of people he could speak to and question. Chunk would be in and out before the rest of the law enforcement would arrive. 

Recognizing him, the receptionist sat up from her desk and pointed down the right hallway, giving him slurry directions before turning back to her computer. Chunk nodded, following where the apparent noises of conversation appeared to be coming from until he reached a door with the word morgue etched in white. 

Behind the door donned a different voice, pitchier than Bull's but not too high, and in apparent annoyance. Through the muffled noise coming from the crack underneath the door, Chunk can manage to hear scattered bits of a heated discussion between the two of them. 

So he knocked, and the two men shut up very hastily. "This is Investigator Palmer, looking for Jason Bull?"

"Investigator?" One of the voices inside the morgue area says accusedly, and despite it still being muffled he can hear Bull's sigh of dismay before the door opens to reveal two faces to the voices he was hearing - one familiar and one daunting. 

"Palmer," Bull begins cautiously, the man beside him crossing his arms with a pressed look. He's shorter than him, and definitely shorter than Bull - but what he seems to lack in height he makes up in the scrawny death stare he appears to be giving him. 

Chunk takes a breath, scooting his foot behind his heel. "Good morning, Sheriff," he greeted politely in an attempt to ignore the tension thick in the room. "Am I interrupting anything?"

"No, absolutely not," Bull feigns indifference, but the glare he gives Benny says otherwise. "Benny, this is Private Investigator Chunk Palmer, came down all the way from NYC," he introduces him, before turning back to Chunk with a kinder look. "This is Detective Colón... he used to work here." 

"Oh," he responds, because he truly has nothing else to say. "'s a pleasure to meet you, Detective. Were you assigned here as well?"

"That would be none of your business," Benny fires back, and Chunk feels himself beginning to flare up in the slightest. 

Bull sours. "It is mine, as the sheriff of this county," he tells Benny, asserting a dominant position over Benny. "Why are you here, Colón?"

Benny meets his eyes with equal fire. "We're talking later, you and me, got it? Right now, we've got a dead body to assess."

Beginning to second guess even coming here, Chunk took a sip of his coffee and took a slight step back. "I can come back another time," Chunk tells him. "Maybe in the afternoon-"

"Stay," Bull tells him, more like he's ordering him rather than asking. "And don't mind the detective. He hasn't had his morning coffee."

Under his breath, he can hear the detective mutter as they begin to approach the silhouette covered by the white cloth. If there's one thing he and the man have in common, it's the chills that they both get as Bull lifts up the sheet to reveal the very woman whose death they had gathered for. Her tawny beige skin only looked paler with the cold, now that the mud and the remnants of dirt and ickiness were washed away, cuts only more prominent as they began to look less like grazes and more like lengthy slashes. The purples he dreamt of the night before are only colored even more, opaqueness only prominent as their eyes get the full image affront them. 

If Chunk wasn't grimacing even more, he was definitely getting antsy as Bull handed him a pair of latex gloves to make his personal examinations upon her body. Detective Colón took it without a hint of friendliness, and Chunk began to piece it together - these two had history. 

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, the unpleasant odor of the morgue filled his lungs and made him even more nauseous. "Any indication of sexual assault? Semen?"

"No," Bull answers quickly, and the question seems to have shaken him too because he seems to take a moment to close his eyes and take a deep breath. Chunk lets out the breath he had been holding in relief, moving to the body and beginning to exam it.

The knife wounds and cuts were deeper than he had anticipated - there were at least two that had cut down to the bone, and the rest following it were also significantly deep. If it wasn't the stab wounds that rendered her weak, it was the huge abdominal gash made on her right side. The coroners had already had it taken care of, but still...

"What was the time of the estimated death?"

Bull checks the paper. "70 hours ago, blood loss."

Chunk sighs. It really was an uncommon shortcut. 

"She was found yesterday in the early hours," Chunk said to himself, adding more to his mental scenario. "Judging from the size of this gash, she would've died at midnight three days ago. I'm surprised no one found her yet."

"You did that math all by yourself?" 

Startled by the detective's rather rude interruption, Chunk turned and faced the man, giving him a bit of a glare. That fire beginning to flare is beginning to spark into a flame, but he throws a bucket of water on that and turns to Bull. "When was she reported missing?"

"The morning after the Roberts family had their dinner," he sharply answered. "Though I do regret it - our department did not search as thoroughly as we should've. It took so long to find her that..."

"That you were lucky," he chokes out, and Chunk quickly parts his eyes from the Bull and the corpse and turns to the previously hard headed detective. "You were lucky that you got to her and her face was still untouched, you know?"

Chunk raised an eyebrow - their notion of the victim was similar, but there was something off about the man's reaction to the fact. His eyes watered and he shared a look with Bull, and Chunk knew that they knew something he didn't. 

Following that, Detective Colón stormed out of the morgue, tearing off his gloves and throwing them into the biohazard labeled trash can with nothing akin to a goodbye. Bull left himself looking down at the corpse as Chunk chose to let his eyes follow Benny, who ignored all the other stares thrown at him as he made a show of walking out of the office. 

"Not to pry," Chunk began, nervous that he may be intruding on something private. "But what's up with him? Would he happen to know the victim?"

"Long story," Bull shortened to two words, shrugging in indifference as if this kind of thing happened every day. "He'll be around town for a bit, I suggest you ignore him."

With so much as a pause, Chunk nods, stretching his gloves and letting them slap against the junction of his hand and arm before moving back to examine Kara. The knife wounds are deep and smooth, caving in deeper like a valley but as the slice ends, it begins to come back up into the skin. This is a knife with a purpose of slicing and not stabbing, he notes, and if the stab was made, it was driven in there deeply and stirred around like an arcade game joystick. "Overkill," Chunk comments, before he disregards the knife wounds in favor of keeping his morning coffee down. 

Moving on, Chunk takes the gloves off and places them in the biohazard trash bin, hands a little sweaty. "Thank you for this, Sheriff," he manages. "You wouldn't happen to have a list of people I could speak to about the victim, would you? Family before the incident? her husband's family?"

"I can give you the husband's number, and from there you can get the rest of the contact info," Bull tells him. "We also have an interrogation room down, if you saw it in passing. Feel free to use any of the resources here at the station provided for as long as you need be, got it?"

"Of course," Chunk affirms, and he places his hands back in his pocket and turns to walk away. Before he leaves though, Bull waves a little Manila folder.

"The autopsy report," he says. "Can't forget this, can you, Mr. Palmer?"

Chunk sighed. "Sorry, my mind's everywhere," he apologized, but Bull shook his head. 

"Don't go too hard on yourself. These cases will solve themselves, got it?"

He gives him a thankful grin. "Got it. I'll see you this evening."

Turning on his heel, Chunk shut the door behind the morgue and gave the folder a brief look-over before he headed out the door. Up against the wall was Detective Colón, cigarette bound in his mouth with his eyes panned on him. 

_Ignore him,_ Bull told him before he left the morgue area. So he did exactly what Bull had told him - ignored his presence - and he got in the car and drove off, autopsy report in the cluttered passenger seat next to him.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading - share your thoughts, if ya dont mind! you can come ask me about this au on tumblr @yo-let-me-get-a-milkyway, where i talk about these crazy lawyers (turned detectives) 24/7!


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